You deserve what you're going through. You would rather become good tomorrow than be good today

the title of this video was a sentence that was written by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius almost 2,000 years ago in what was then his private Journal of sorts which we now have available to us called the meditations and this sentence is so powerful and that's why he must have wrote it down because the meditations really are just a collection of powerful sentences ideas reminders to himself since it was his private writings to be better to apply the virtues that he learned to get away away from the vices that have been bothering him and that

he's been trying to escape and this one too has that effect it almost admonishes us but it doesn't quite bring us only down it almost elevates us it it makes us aspire to become better and I think it has this effect because it's something it hits on something that we ourselves deal with all of us almost on a daily basis and why I think it's actually very powerful is because it points out something a truth that hides in plain sight that once you know it it starts working for you and what Marcus Aurelius means when

he says you deserve everything you're going through because you'd rather become good tomorrow than be good today it immediately makes us think of all the things that we want to do better or all the bad things that we know we must stop doing but whenever we're faced with the actual work and challenge to do so to make that change we find a reason to once again again delay that work to find a reason why now is not the right time but that once we have this certain position in Life or the time to do it

or the money to do it that's when we'll attack this issue and that's when we'll finally become better as we promised ourselves and we take this excuse and This Promise as a justification in it self to delay once more what we know we should be doing now we say tomorrow I'll start next week I'll start next year I'll start until then we surrender to this Vice or whatever it is that we want to become and make of ourselves we we surrender to the opposite condition and that's what Marcus Aurelius points out in himself and gets

himself tries to get himself to stop doing and this immense Universal and Timeless truth is really boils down to the fact that every single thing every single challenge struggle or behavior that you ever want to adapt or avoid asks of you to attain it or to fight it in this present moment not in the past not in the future but this present moment epicus likes to say this is what all your training has been for the Olympics are now the training is over you must showcase what you have learned now and not be a Perpetual

student or perpetually in training but that the Olympics have arrived and they're now and this is exactly what you will realize that in your life is going on as well no matter what it is that you're dealing with the challenge the struggle the fight the time to win or lose the battle is right now but instead what do we do I mean take this very simple example of dieting if you want to lose weight if you want to control your weight the time to do so is right now at this present meal when the craving

comes when you know that you're about to do something that you shouldn't be doing when you're about to eat something that would um diminish your goals for the day that would put you over that caloric deficit that you need to be at all the reasonings of your mind who which is used to doing whatever it wants and and that bad negative condition that you're trying to get away from will give you many excuses and many reasons to justce Once one more time eat this or that again and it makes it seem like such a small

thing to do and that it wouldn't diminish your larger goal goal of of controlling or reducing your weight or whatever it might be and another thing that it does is this mind that is so used to doing what you don't want it to do it will make it look like the entire world the entire future is upon your shoulders right now that it's not just about this one meal but that in the future there are thousands hundreds of thousands more meals that you'll have to face that you'll have to say no to and that you

could never do that so you might as well give up now once we realize that that's untrue once we realize that this one moment is all there is everything becomes much more clearer and much easier it is about this exact moment that everything is dependent upon take another example if you want to become someone who doesn't lie so much you want to give up lying and the moment comes when a lie could at least make it look like it would make your life easier it could get you out of a sticky situation or it could

get you out of a confrontational situation all that kicks in and the battle becomes com to be right here right now and that's when you must fight it that's when everything depends on you if you once again take what seems to be the easy Road and lie to get your way to get um out of something then you've lost but similarly if you don't give into it if you now make a change if you now Act exactly like the person that you want to become then you in that moment and until you do otherwise have

become that person you have achieved your goal and especially with the example of honesty many people think that lying is something that everyone does that there's such a thing as a white lie so if we give up lying we give up almost a competitive advantage everyone else is doing it if I'm not doing it I'm going to disadvantage myself what's the point what's the point of being honest just for honesty's sake of course someone like Marcus Aurelius would say that the point is not to be honest just to be honest but that again like in

that prior video I discussed which is called um become selfish to become selfless there is a an entirely individually profitable reason to become an honest person every person's mind who who who lies or to who who invents situations and excuses to get out of other situations has a very convoluted mind and lives in a form of anxiety constantly of meeting Maybe coming across this or that person who might catch them in a lie cuz they're in a place where they're not supposed to be where they said they wouldn't be so if they come across this

person now they'll be found out and they have to keep up all these scenarios that they've made up to all these different people in different situations and they can many of them can barely sleep at night fearing the consequences of being found out making sure worrying if they had if they let something slip an honest person doesn't deal with any of that an honest person has the most simple straightforward peaceful life you could possibly imagine and that's the selfish reason for example to become honest and that's the real reason and that's the benefit the true

benefit that it brings you it's not just so you can say you're an honest person and feel better than someone else it's about improving your life that what that's what true virtue really is but we can't get there if we constantly delay the battle to become an honest person a healthier person a smarter person a Kinder person a more fair person whatever you want to be whatever you want to become whatever you want to do down from the smallest Behavior to the biggest virtue that you could possibly attain and and want to attain yourself the

battle for that the struggle for that the exam for that whatever you want to call it is happening right now right here forget about everything else forget all the other challenges that you might have to face in the future and stop combining them in your mind to ruin your present and also forget about the past what has happened there has happened and it's and it's gone it's really this one single moment this one small challenge this one single cupcake not all of food not all meals but this single cupcake is what's challenging you right now

and is what stands between you and your goal you and your ideal self if you want it that way if you want to become more honest this one situation in which you could choose a lie or the truth is what stands in between you and your goal this is what Marcus Aurelius is pointing out and this is the single most powerful and effective tool you have to become exactly the person that you want to become and it applies to anything from our more let's call it profane Ambitions and goals to the highest ones we could

possibly imagine everything is Behavior everything is personality and once you conquer the present moment habit will take over it will become automated it will become your nature and your starting position to be however you were in that moment to be more honest to be someone who can say no to Temptations say no to desires say say no to harmful behaviors say no to gambling whatever it may be and this is why practice is important Marcus Aurelius wrote this sentence down not for us to quote and impress our friends but to remind ourselves of a much

larger virtue of a much larger method of becoming the person that we know know we need to become so now that you know the behind the scenes of it the background and what it's referring to now you can really use the sentence as it was intended to be used as it was written down in Marcus oris's meditations to which I'm sure he came back time and time again to read these things and to remind himself of the larger Concepts and virtues behind it I want you to realize once again that every single struggle that you

have every single goal that you have and every single failure that you could possibly experience you will experience in the present moment right now right here and nowhere else ever what you're fighting is not everything all at once present past and future but it's only this one instance of it in this very moment apply that little willpower that we have we only have a little willpower everything else is habit we we build habit by applying that small willpower that we have in the present moment apply that small willpower in this present moment just say no

this one time say I don't know about the next time but this one time I've said no I've stood my ground and I acted exactly the way the way I wanted to act the kind of person exactly the kind of person person that I want to be would have acted that's how I have acted and believe me that's everything in the mind of the universe if you will the present moment the intent to do something is the very act itself stick to that and think of nothing else all of your dreams need to be and

can only be realized or not realized right this instant